Perform Failover for Planned Maintenance

 

These flows depend on using the backup settings described in the topic Best Practices for Primary and Backup Environments.

This is the preferred method of maintenance. This method provides a path for ensuring that all settings, recordings, and data are migrated from original primary to new primary, then back to the original primary. This method is also sufficient for upgrading B Series Appliances as well.

1. Go to the primary or backup failover page at /login > Management > Failover.
2. Click Check this box to pull a data-sync from the site instance while becoming the backup next to Become <role>.
3. Click Become <role> and wait.
   • The page will come back, and a data-sync will be in progress.
   • All clients will be disconnected from the B Series Appliance and will not be able to log back in during this time. This ensures no new session data is generated during the sync.
   • When the sync is over, the roles will swap, assuming both sides are reachable.
   • Do not panic if you refresh the page and the roles are both Backup momentarily. The role swap is handled serially, so it will only be a moment that this occurs. Wait a little longer, and the old backup should become primary.
4. If necessary, swing DNS or the NAT after you see that the roles swap. If configured for Shared IP, skip this step.
5. The original backup B Series Appliance is now the primary B Series Appliance.
6. Perform maintenance on the primary.

   During failover sync, /login settings on the currently active primary take precedence over those found on the backup B Series Appliance. This means that in case of conflicts, changes to the /login settings of the current primary will overwrite those of the backup site during failover sync. If you make changes to the backup site, consider noting the changes or downloading a Backup (without logged history) from the Management tab.

   • During this time, track any changes made in /login of the new primary site.
   • Sessions may be performed normally.
   • The settings of the current primary may be modified in the /login interface just as if it were the normal primary. They will not be lost when the original primary takes over again.
7. When the primary is ready to resume its normal duties and is back on the network, repeat steps 1-4, but change the original primary to back to primary.

Instead of going to the /login interface to change roles, you can use the BeyondTrust failover API. For details, see Best Practices for Primary and Backup Environments.